By Expat Chef
The other night I had this beautiful dream. I was worried at first. You see, I had found 50, yes, 50 different varieties of heirloom tomato plants and I had no place to plant them. I am also a lousy gardener, (other than herbs) but this is a dream. When I walked outside, I was back on the farm where I lived as a kid. Stretched out before me were perfect, endless rows of a vegetable garden.
At the end of the rows, waiting, tilled and at the ready, was a place for each and every one of my tomato plants. There were German Stripe, Green Zebra, Cherokee Purple, and Lemony, seven varieties of cherry tomatoes in a rainbow of colors and flavors, Thai Pink, White Beauty, Japanese Black Trifele, Speckeled Siberian …
And then suddenly I was riding a motorcycle in the Alps on my way to go ski. And there were three tall, good-looking men wearing kilts in a bar. The dream got a bit weirder from there and I would have to charge you by the minute to hear the rest of it.
Where was I? Oh yes, TOMATOES. Heirloom tomatoes. While the dream sounds a bit outlandish, one part of it is true. No, not the men in kilts. C’mon get your mind out of the gutter and back into the freshly tilled garden row. There really are fifty varieties of heirloom tomato plants I could easily get my hands on. Actually, there are over 200 varieties if you do a bit of searching. That’s no dream, either.
The farmer who runs our organic co-op, Farmer Dan, not only raises these little beauties, he sells the plants at the local farmers’ market. It’s an interesting concept, like teaching a man to fish. As for eating local, how much more local can you get than planted in your own backyard and started out by your local farmer?
Now, the only problem I have is to find the land and the gardener. Then, it hit me. My friend Jerry has a huge yard and he grows things, miraculously, without killing them.
He’s also a sucker for a great BLT, so it was an easy sell. Now, I just have to pick up the plants, and the seeds of my plot are sown. Okay, so maybe it sounds a bit desperate. Unless you’ve had heirloom tomatoes. You have, haven’t you?
Try them, around late July, when the sun is hot and they are picked completely ripe from the vine. Then tell me you can go back to those four measly varieties at the grocery store. Let’s see, basic round red ones, Roma red ones, red cherry tomatoes, and if you are lucky(!) grape tomatoes. All picked when they are green and chemically ripened enroute to the store. Red, round, perfect. And perfectly tasteless. Oh, boy! Have we been deceived all these years, or what?
There is no going back once you’ve had the good stuff. And, while I don’t know if this applies to men in kilts, it sure does for vegetables.
So, buy some of those little beauties, plant well, and while you are watching your garden grow …
Sweet dreams.
You can find the Expat Chef barefoot, boisterous, but not pregnant, in her kitchen.
